by Trey Perry
Apr 11, 2018
Doane’s tennis season is over halfway done and both teams are confident heading into the rest of the year.
Conference play for both the men’s and women’s team began last week. Head Coach Seth Harris said the month of April was probably the most important month of the season for Doane Tennis. Almost all of the teams that Doane plays in April are GPAC (Great Plains Athletic Conference) members, so Doane is able to see where it stands amongst conference teams at the time before the official GPAC tournament in May.
“The rest of the schedule is kind of preparing for April,” Harris said. “Now we get to play it out, the stuff that really matters right now.”
Sophomore Elliott Abromeit said both teams were determined to win conference championships and make it to the national tournament. However, he said that it seemed only one team stood as an obstacle.
“As far as I'm concerned, Hastings is all that stands between us and nationals,” Abromeit said. “Last year we were disappointed with our results in the conference season, and this year we've been keeping that pain of the loss on our minds as we keep Hastings in our crosshairs.”
Both teams came up short of their national appearance goal last year when each of them lost in the semi-finals of the GPAC tournament. In order to secure the ticket to nationals, the teams had to win the championship.
Harris said he’d seen a lot of improvements in both teams this year and credited different competition to the teams’ advancement. He explained the teams have had a tougher schedule this year, traveling to venues outside of their normal circuit and played against bigger schools.
“We’ve gone on a lot of trips this year, which we haven’t really done before,” Harris said. “We went to Colorado, down to Wichita, over to Des Moines and we don’t normally leave our little bubble.”
Harris added before arriving at Doane, the teams only competed in the spring. When he took over the head coach position at the beginning of last year, however, Harris wanted to give the tennis program a similar experience to what he got when he was in college. Thus, Harris implemented fall competitions and more travel to give the teams tougher matches and broaden their horizons.
Senior Brianna Kempel said she liked this approach and added she felt more structure to the team since Harris took over as head coach.
Harris said he has seen a fire in this year’s teams that he didn’t see last year, describing the men’s team as “gym rats” and said the women’s team was the strongest he has ever seen tennis faces its next contest on April 13 against Midland University in Fremont.